In Order To Become A Better Manager, You Need To Learn How To Act Like A Girl

I think that we can all agree that there are certain IT manager skills and traits that the really good managers have. As IT managers, we’d like to discover what these traits are (is there any IT manager training for this?) and then find ways to incorporate them into our own management style. It turns out that some really smart people have been studying the people who do a good job of managing teams and what they’ve discovered is that we all need to become just a bit more feminine.

Well, guess what? As with so many other things in life, what I saw on the big screen does not really translate into real life very well. Yes, it is possible to be the type of IT manager who does all of those manly things that we think that effective managers do, but what we’ll quickly discover is that nobody wants to work on our team and those who have to are not very productive.

So what’s the solution? Well, depending on how manly you are you’re not going to like this very much. It turns out that the most effective managers are the ones who demonstrate traits that are traditionally considered to feminine characteristics. Sorry about this – sensitivity is in, pounding on tables is out.

The big question is what traits do we need to have? It turns out that there are 7 different personality characteristics that we all need to work at. Here they are:

Empathy: This can be a tough one to do well. What it requires you to do is to be sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of the members of your team. This means that you need to think about what they are thinking about.

Vulnerability: In my book, this is the hardest trait of all. As an IT manager you need to acknowledge that you have limitations – you can’t do it all. When you encounter a situation where you need help, you have to be willing to ask for it.

Humility: It turns out that it’s not all about you. What you need to learn how to do is to find ways to serve the members of your team. When something is a success, you need to be able to share the credit with everyone who contributed.

Inclusiveness: In our fast-paced world, we like to get everything done quickly. However, in order to work better with our team, we need to learn the skills of asking for other people’s options and then listening to what they have to say. This is a key part of any IT team building efforts that you conduct.

Generosity: They say that it’s better to give than to receive. This means that you need to learn how to give of your advice, support, time and contacts.

Balance: You have a life and you have a job. You need to make sure that you feed both of these beasts properly.

Patience: Not everything that is important is due tomorrow. Instead, you need to teach yourself to take the long-term view of how the things that you are working on today will impact the team over the long haul.

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

Becoming a better manager is something that all of us should trying to accomplish all of the time. The difficult part of this is that it’s not exactly clear what we need to be doing in order to become better. The good news is that experts have been studying effective managers and they tell us that what we need to do is to become more like girls.

What they mean by this is that a lot of the personality characteristics that are traditionally associated with women turn out to be traits that leaders need to have. These qualities include: empathy, vulnerability, humility, inclusiveness, generosity, balance, and patience.

We are entering an era where labeling traits as belonging to either men or women is started to become out-of-date. Instead, what really matters is that as IT managers we want to be equipped with the traits that will allow us to manage our teams effectively. It sure looks like we need to spend some time learning how to add some feminine skills to our management playbook.